Mad fact... 42% of Labour Prime Ministers have had to fire Peter Mandelson.

They are all findable. LLMs can just process a lot more information much quicker.

You have a pretty good track record to be fair.

1 yr ago I wrote a massive thread on @iea.org huge AI / energy report.

WELL it's one year later and they've released an update, but notably, there is no chatbot. Well....I'm going to read it anyway, and you're all going to get spammed with notes :)

that's means a NEW ULTRATHREAD 🧵

Infrastructure isn't supposed to turn a profit.

The sewers aren't supposed to be profitable.

The parks aren't supposed to be profitable.

The postal service isn't supposed to be profitable.

The "profit" is in how it enables everyone in society to do more.

Is that not what GB Energy is trying to do? But also - would it be more efficient? I think CfDs are working very well to be honest. It’s a system that has been copied by many EU countries. I’m no expert, but I’d put things like water and transport higher up the list of things to unprivatise.

Note that CfDs are two way - the money goes the other direction when the wholesale prices are lower than the agreed price for the contract in question.

I think you are perhaps confusing wholesale prices and bill prices. The CfD accountancy is done in between those two. Your energy company pays the suppliers extra when gas is setting the prices high and gets that money back via a gov owned company called LCCC. That is then baked into your bill.

Indeed. A CfD is just a way for renewable sources to be paid a fixed rate for their energy. They are an accounting trick and the exact mechanism is not super important. What is important is that they reduce both risk for the supplier and price volatility on energy bills.

I’ve no time for Starmer but the double standards are sickening.

Not sure what you mean. CfDs make up a minority of the electric market (but growing fast). If more of the market were CfDs we would have cheaper bills. The bills we pay already take into account the discounts to the wholesale price that the existing CfDs result in.

The government, and eventually the consumer via lower bills.

Thanks for the rundown! Sounds like most of the problems aren’t really with the software then :(

Is the data open enough for someone to just build something better and start putting QR codes on bus stops? Shouldn’t be necessary but…

Oh sure, and I’m as frustrated as anyone with the greens’ nimby contingent. But Bluesky are discussing this as if it’s a policy announcement from Polanski or something. She’s got it dead wrong but I’m a bit tired of furore.

I was dissuaded that this is a good idea by this rather good article. In short, we are already well on the way to the market solving this and all the interventions have large risks or downsides. A really monumental amount of renewable energy is already slated to come online soon. Should change a lot

* one green who got in the news

Mark as spam

🙌 I’m a die hard member of the Wednesdays off crew though. The only downside is that working more than two days in a row now seems unimaginably exhausting.

Going 4 days a week was the best money I ever spent (and similarly I think probably the company is getting 90% of the value and I’m only losing 10% salary after taxes so 🤷)

Barely even rained

Simple, they will ignore it

My kingdom for a Bluesky client that can also apply dark mode to all the light mode screenshots in my feed

Can’t wait for the Matt Levine dunks

That XKCD meme of how the internet works being held up by precarious blocks, edited so the total is 'All knowledge about Buckinghamshire' and the one supporting block is 'An archivist who has worked here since the 1990s with decent Latin skills'.

Relevant to recent discussions:

Country that lectures Iran on democracy arrests another 523 people for peacefully protesting The absurdity surrounding the UK’s treatment of Palestine Action and its supporters has reached new lows.

Country that lectures Iran on democracy arrests another 523 people for peacefully protesting
open.substack.com/pub/councile...

Having a little snack on the way round the supermarket

Any idea where they’re moving to?

Matt Goodwin looking for a new authoritarian regime to simp for

To be fair that’s my least favourite thing about all other chat interfaces too